


The Questions of an Almost Outlier

by Proudtobeinvisible



Series: Before I die [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Enjoy if you actually do read it, I just thought it sounded cool, Nurture over Nature, Rebirth, Religion, So Alexander Dubenich isn't my name, Souls, Yeah so idk how to tag, garden soul, i guess, it talks about death, literally everything that has ever passed my mind, literally idk what this is, my twisted world view, someone save me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 11,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Proudtobeinvisible/pseuds/Proudtobeinvisible
Summary: As Alexander Dubenich's life draws to a close, he is hit with the realization that no one will ever think like him again.  That he has done no great in his life, but he knew that he could have.  So he writes, his last thoughts about life, god, hell, heaven, souls, love.  Read if you wish, learn about the mind of an Almost Outlier.





	1. An introduction, of sorts.

My name is Alexander Dubenich. I am not an old man, nor am I a young one. Neither am I a smart man, nor am I stupid. 

I just am.

My name will not be remembered in the course of history. I’m not very important. I’ve done no heinous evil, nor a fantastic good. 

In all senses of the word, I am average. I have no aspects of myself to set me above. I am of dark hair and dark eyes. I am of light skin and nothing about my origin should be a surprise. 

Perhaps I am an outlier because of how impossibly average I am. 

But what is the difference between me and the rest of the world? 

I’ve loved people, that is something all people have done. I’ve lost these people I’ve loved in turn. Isn’t that common? 

What makes other people’s love and loss more important than mine? Was the sense of their loss more acute? More painful than my own? 

Let me tell you something my friend, pain is relative. 

What could kill me could wound you. Decimate your life? It could rebuild mine. Everything in our world is two parts relative and one part universal. 

In this writing I will look at what makes us human. The philosophy that hangs around the edges of our visions. The things that we cast off in the search of happiness in our lives. I'll look at the painfully average life I've had. Compare it to your (probably) no so average life. I hope you enjoy.


	2. Nurture over Nature.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So again, I don't expect anyone to read it. If you do great. This chapter is about the idea of nurture over nature. Which is it? Is it nurture over nature? Or nature over nurture? Is it both? I don't know.

How is my life the same as someone else's’? How is it different? Where do we differ? How? Why?

Is the world correct about nurture over nature? 

Studies have been done separating identical twins at birth and recording their lives. Asking questions like “How is your academic performance?” or “What do you like?” Simple things like that. In some senses it proves nature over nurture. Other aspects the studies disproves it. 

But studies like this are inaccurate. It seems not enough people want to separate their children, and have one be raised by another.

I can see that. The thought of separating myself and my sibling is a daunting one. Yes we fight, yes we scream. But at the end of the day we are family… and what’s life without it? 

I would like to say that the thought of giving my children to science is horrible. But truth be told; I don’t have any. 

Not a single drop of my DNA mixed with another out there. And I doubt there ever will be. Not because I am too old or never taken a lover. Just that I am simply not the type to have kids. I am too sharp, too broken, too much of everything unwanted and not enough of the wanted. 

After all, what if I mess up their lives? 

Do prospective parents think that? 

Nurture over nature. I suppose. 

Many people theorize there is an equal balance in ourselves. An equality of good and evil… others think that our experiences shape us. Whether or not that balance of the two ideas of good and evil is formed. These people claim that our lives shape us, not nature. I on the other hand, think that neither nurture or nature is dominate over the other. I believe that we are created two parts our experiences and two parts the stuff making our bones and blood. 

I would like to think that I’ve inherited my mother’s fierceness because it was born in my bones. And that my intense hatred for pickles comes from the time when my father forced them down my throat.  
I find that the word nurture in the sense we use it is… well for the lack of a better word. Wrong. Nurture is defined as “something that nourishes.” by Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Who says an upbringing is kind? Who says its nourishing? Who says its caring? 

In the animal world upbringings are cruel. Some species kill their siblings before they are out of the womb. Others kill members of their species who aren’t of their blood line. Their parents teaching them to either kill or be killed. At the very basic level, life is violent. 

And don’t think that humans are above this violence. I could argue that out of all the species we are of the most blood frenzied. How many other species have members who kill for solely that reason? Make war over disagreements? 

We claim to be advanced but we fall to the savagery inside. Like in the Lord of the Flies? It exists in all things, in all of us. 

It is there by nature… or perhaps by nurture. 

I don’t know. My theory won’t hold weight anywhere but here. In my own mind and my own words. My pen is a gun, so are my keystrokes. Forcing everyone to listen to me. 

But the gun is loaded with blanks. No real threat. 

Nurture over nature? 

Nature over nurture? 

Their equality of power over us.


	3. Time After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So... yeah.. I'm back? 
> 
> This chapter is an exploration of what happens to a human after death, but not in a traditional sense. It is kinda of what happens to our bodies. Like what happens if we're cremated, buried, or organ donors. I hope you enjoy, and a kudos or comment would be great! Thanks for reading!

Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Just changed. A truth many a science teacher has beaten into my head at public school. 

But religion comes into play more often then not. 

It claims we are here once and done. Excluding those who do include reincarnation. But their logic I find is flawed as well. But I will talk about souls, life after death, and reincarnation later. For now, let us talk about our bodies. Once we die we can take, well our bodies can take multiple different routes. 

1) We are buried.  
2) We are cremated, (there are two options, being kept in a jar and scattered in the wind)  
3) We become organ donors. 

1) When our bodies are buried, decomposition sets in and we are turned to dirt. At least, that is what science tells us. But realize my dear, that by becoming dirt you can become many possible things. 

For instance, a plant may absorb you, turning you into energy, food, air. An animal might get you stuck in it's fur, taking you to places you've only dreamed of. From the plants though, you will become air. The very thing keeping us alive. Your essence floating through the world, being breathed in by others. Being constantly changed, not stuck in one form for too long. I don't now about you but, having spent my life painfully average life as one thing. I would love to be different, a constant change. I could go on about the infinite possibilities of life after a burial. But I'll leave those possibilities for you to explore. I've spent many a day thinking of all the many possibilities I could take. 

2) To be burned to ash seems like a very possible option to most people. For reasons I understand; they don't seem to like the idea of becoming dirt. I can see why someone wouldn't like to become dirt. But contrary to belief, it still continues (life) after ashes. 

a: To be kept in a jar is certainly the least romantic option. To be kept in a dusty silence? To be alone? Forgotten? I don't think that it would be pleasant. But I am not you, and you are not me. We are as different as the grass and the clouds. I could romanticize it in once way, I suppose. Your network of people know where you are. They take comfort in the knowledge you're there. They can go to you if needed. 

b: By comparison being burned then released is far more romantic. You get released into the air, where water droplets collect on you, then you become rain. To fall to the ground, giving life to the planet. Romantic no? Or you get carried in the wind, carried so unimaginably far, free, fearless as the dawn. I'm in love with the idea of it. The idea of running free on the wind. Becoming rain? A cloud? Or maybe, you float on to the ocean, falling into the deepest crevasse of it. Your physical manifestation going where no other could go. How adventurous could that be? Or you're going on the air, and settle in dust. Collecting on things that are important to someone or history. A million things can be done if you let you ashes to the wind, cloud, ocean, rain, breath, or a million other things my mind cannot quite put into words. An infinity of choices, possibilities, or maybes. 

3: Organ donor.

I'm always surprised how more people don't check the box at the DMV that tells the government they are to become donors. I mean, why not? It is a way to live after death? Your heart pumping in someone else's chest, them being grateful you existed? I've read a book that references a "network soul," I find myself thinking of it a lot. Being "alive" but not technically so. Wouldn't it be interesting? I would like to test it out sometimes. But alas, I could prove nothing. Perhaps if I invent a way to communicate with the departed. But like I said before, I am not exceptionally clever, nor am I stunningly stupid. I just AM. Back to my original thought though. Being an organ donor would {possibly} create a network soul. Think of it. Your mind stretched across many people. But they are all cemented by one thing, YOU. Think of how grateful the recipients and their families would be. Knowing your checking a single box in a DMV form saved a number of lives. We may not be saints in life, but to some people, we'd be the greatest gift their god(s) could ever give. You name would be lifted to that of a saints' (or heros') in their world. 

But I have to drive this point home. I am not a philosopher. I am not a poet. Nor am I of any importance. I'm just writing the thought that insist on ripping through my mind at every waking hour.


	4. Exploration of A Soul After Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, I updated again! So this is about what happens to a soul after death, if reincarnation is real. If there is a heaven, or nothing. The idea of hell will be spoken about in a different chapter. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Likes and comments maybe?

Suppose there is a soul. Many people say there isn’t one. But for the purpose of this chapter; say there is one. I’ll dissect the possibility of not having one later.

What happens to it after life left? Some religions says reincarnation, others heaven. A few say nothing. Just the blackness that haunts a great many dreams. 

Like I said before science says matter cannot be created or destroyed. Just changed. What’s to say that isn’t true? Who’s to say that it is? Well let’s think of this.

If matter cannot be created or destroyed then we have been here before. Which means; the idea we go to heaven is false. But we’re not going to think of that {yet}. If we been here before than that means we are transcendent. I’ve certainly been to places I’ve never known and felt a sense of homecoming. There has been no doubt in my mind that I have been here before. 

Take New York for example. I’ve been there once in my life. But I couldn’t shake that feeling. That idea, that knowledge that I had been there before. Even now, as I pen these words. I feel as if I have spoken them before. My ideas before they are fully thought. An expanse of possibilities that stretches beyond what I have thought. 

How does one explain away that feeling? That… for lack of a better word, that knowledge away? How can we disprove it?

Some part of me is constantly telling me I’ve been alive before. The larger part of me, the rationality in me is telling me that is not possible. 

That there is no way on this earth that I have been here before. But that still small voice inside of me is screaming its dissent. Therefore I cannot dispone its merits completely. 

Who am I to discredit whole religions?

I believe that I have been here before. But what is my opinion compared to yours? I suppose my real question is, what do you think?

But now let’s talk about heaven. I did say later did I not?

My religion dictates I will go to heaven when I die. Or purgatory, or hell. I’m not sure where I’ll go. 

I imagine my heaven will be perfect to me. My family there, all the impossible questions I’ve asked will have the implausible answers. I will be accepted, I will be loved. The people who’ve I lost will be there. The God who I’ve been promised is there, would be the first there to greet me. And I’ll ask the questions that burst through my mind, my soul. 

I need those questions answered. 

I imagine my heaven will be made of millions of trees. Thousands, the sunlight sprinting through the leaves dying the world in almost violent shades of green. With a sky so blue it is cruel. Clouds so white they are painful to look at. My amazingly broken and beautiful heaven. 

But let us consider there isn’t such thing as a heaven, or an afterlife. 

After death just having nothing. Just nothing. 

How terrifying is that thought? No heaven, or hell. Or even purgatory. We just stop existing. Just nothing.  
All our lives meaning nothing. All the good, all the bad, just nothing. 

It is not a line of questions that I would like to think about. But I promised to pursue it. Skip this passage if you like.

But I have never backed down from a challenge. So I am forcing myself to continue. 

The thought of nothing though. The afterlife we are promised are just gone. 

Our spirits not lingering. Just gone forever. I don’t think that is most desirable. I hate the idea. My cruelly beautiful heaven just gone. I don’t think there's anything more to talk about. 

We die then there is nothing more after. The end. 

I don’t think it would be desirable having no heaven. But there are people in the world who I would miss and those who would miss me in turn. 

But there are many of people who believe that thought. Who are comfortable without a heaven at the end of their live. I know these types of people. They live their lives on edge. Balancing on the paper edges of knives. Living each day as their last. Their whole existence spent trying to make their mark on life. I theorize that their heaven would be spoken on lips. Their heaven living on the pages of a book. Remembering is how they spend their existential lives. But how am I knowing the inner workings of another being? I barely understand mine. But I do know that knowing, that hoping there is a heaven waiting for me at the end makes life worth living.


	5. What happens to our soul during life?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So my grandmother just passed away, and I couldn't bring myself to write about death anymore. So I wrote about a soul, and how it is like a garden cause plants make me feel better. I hope you enjoy and kudos, comment, and (maybe/PLEASE) subscribe. I'm hoping you have a better day then I did.

You probably noticed that I didn’t speak of the concept of ‘hell.’ I had so many thoughts of hell, I decided to create a separate section for those thoughts. That coupled with the fact I am sick of talking through death. I want to talk about life. 

Like I said before, we are two parts individual's experiences, and two parts universal. We all have something unique about ourselves. Whether it be philosophy, sports, math, science, art, or anything else. We are all outliers? That’s what they tell us at least. But the cynical critic in my screams NO! If we are all truly different then life would be so much stranger. But I’m getting off topic, after all this is about one's soul. 

Life shapes us, simple as that. What happens to us creates ourselves. It has a hand in our creation, it chooses our traits in a way that we cannot ignore or discredit. 

Take my life; I’ve lost someone I’ve loved, it broke me. Destroyed me, scattered my being to the wind. 

But I fixed myself. This instance in my life shaped my soul, changed it into something different than it once was. Was that not something to change me?

Something to change my soul? I can say without a doubt that I am the person I am today because my soul changed. 

But yes it can change. But where did the change come from?

Did we have one when we were born? Do the creators of a child give up a portion of their soul to create a new one? 

Or do we create our souls as we age?

From my mother I wish I got her fearlessness. My father, his work ethic. 

But I don’t think that is the case. 

Souls are akin to seeds, a garden if you will. 

Many of them exist in one body. 

It just depends on how you ‘water’ them. 

If you water them with anger and rage it will grow only the seeds that could thrive in such conditions. While killing what could not. 

The soul that would be created would be a product of a garden fueled by hatred. 

While watered by love. That would be a different story. 

A different garden. 

A different soul. 

We all have seeds of potential in us. Our garden soul is dependent on what we water and fertilize it with. 

I think my own soul would be strong. 

Maybe there would be a thousand trees, climbing ever upwards. Watered with hope and kindness. Fertilized with fear and despair. Or maybe millions and millions of flowers. But of the poisoned variety. Beautifully dangerous and wonderfully destructive. I imagine them being watered with a strange mixture of anger and melancholy. What else can create a poisoned blossom?

Thorny bushes? Skeletal trees? Dead flowers? Beautiful carnations? What flowers, plants, and trees create my soul?

What things in my life nurture or destroy my plants? 

What does you garden look like? 

Will I ever know what mine entails? 

The seeds of fear, of malicious, of anger, of rudeness, lurk inside of our soul. Just as the seeds of love, kindness, of hope, of loyalty reside inside. It just depends on how we water the seeds.


	6. The Flaming Abyss?  Or the Sinner's Heaven?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this guy is about hell, written at 3 am when I was on so much caffeine it should be illegal. Idk what I was thinking, I hope you guys enjoy! I'm not really happy about how this turned out. But it's good enough. Kudos and comment if you like it? Anyways enjoy! :)

I've thought long and hard about hell..... I'm not the only one either. Dante's Inferno for instance? The nine circles of hell? I find it strange that there aren't seven circles of hell, one for each deadly sin? Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth? 

But what sends people to hell?

I don't believe it is those sins specifically. I don't understand. What makes pride so sinful? Isn't what Pride what clawed the way for inventions? Isn't Greed what fuels our economy? 

I believe its not what the sins are that makes them bad, but what they cause. 

Lust causes adulteration, and the destruction of trust I suppose. But people can also Lust for other things, like power or money. But it also propels people to work harder, better, faster, at least it does that with me. 

Maybe these sins aren't inherently bad as is, maybe its the surplus of these sins? Maybe, out of all the sins Gluttony is to blame. 

Can you imagine it reaching down our throats unlatching the lock we have on ourselves to leave way for the demons inside?

But what is hell? What is this threat spoken by many a religion? I've been told I'm going many times... What will happen to me? Will the Devil look at me and punish me as promised? Or will he welcome me with open arms? Is it the hot, burning, suffering place that has been described to me by countless priest and religious people? Or would it be the opposite?

Is it a never ending party? Showcasing all the pain in such a way it can be constituted as pleasure? 

Can you picture it?

Fiery gates showcasing all the sins you've done? Once you enter you are bombarded by pain, but slowly ever so achingly slowly it becomes something to moan about? The Devil's reward for you sinning? Your sins pulsing in tandem to give you a devastating feeling of pleasurable pain? Or would it be painful pleasure?

Or is it just torture?

I feel like hell isn't just about pain of the physical form, if it is about it.

People forget that the pain that stems from the mind is arguably the worse of the two.

After all who knows your weaknesses better than you?

My mind knows all my secrets, the ones I try and deny out of existence. I'm sure your's has ones you'd like to keep buried. 

Maybe hell isn't physical pain. But a psychological war?

All the secrets you've kept buried, all the memories you've buried. Coming for you, tearing you apart in such a way that even the most shameless are begging for forgiveness? 

Can you imagine the chants the demons say? 

One, two, three, four, I declare a mind war. Five, six, seven, eight, the memories of your secrets will never abate. 

And are there even layers to hell?

Dante claims that there are nine circles. Nine circles to encompass every single sin one could commit in a life. 

Nine.

One off from ten, the number of perfection. So close but yet so far. 

In the ninth circle it is said betrayers lie. Judas, who betrayed God. Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus for their part in killing Caesar. They are being chewed by the Devil himself. One body in each head of Satan himself, he has three heads, and six broken and bloodied wrings. The trinity reversed to represent hatred? The father, the son ,and the holy spirit changed. Three heads of the Devil, six broken bruised wings of the fallen, Nine circles to punish the damned. 

Did Dante do this on purpose? Did he multiple three by three to rest on a holy number? Did he try and place God in a place where the lost live?

Or was it pure accident? All the ideas of sins and punishments running dry? Dante losing inspiration and putting the Devil in to end it all?

I wonder. 

Tell me, is hell even real? We've talked about heaven being real, but not hell?

Not hell. We'd rather lose eternal pleasure, eternal happiness, than eternal punishment?

I think it is because if there is no hell there would be no justice. 

No hell would mean those who have done grievous law breaking and wrongs would go free in a sense. 

Take Hitler: When asked who needs to go to hell his name shows up so many times. Getting the punishment he deserves for robbing millions of their lives. 

But no hell would mean no justice. No punishment for the man who killed millions of innocents.

No hell means every single murderer, thief, rapist, evil doer walks free. Unpunished for the crimes he committed. 

For me I'd rather take justice served to wrong doers than a life of endless pleasure.

But that is just me. I'm sure more noble people, or selfish would disagree. 

What would our lives be without justice?

What would our afterlives be if no one was punished for their sins?

What will hell be?

Maybe hell is forgetting? Maybe it is everything you did, gone. Everyone in the world forgetting. 

That would be my hell. Everyone forgetting me. 

But wouldn't that be every person's hell?

The void of nothingness? Or maybe some would rather be forgotten?

Could hell be personalized?

Each person getting what they deserved?

What do you think?


	7. Emotions: Bane or Hero?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So wow, I'm alive with no update schedule. Well I'm going to Italy for spring break with my mom, and I plan on updating every Thursday from the week I get back. Thank you all so much for reading! Comments and kudos are always welcome! I'll see you later lovelies.

I won’t lie. I think the concept of the emotions are stupid.

They get in the way of logic. Of what we should be. 

I for one, am hyper-logical. Emotions take a back seat to logic and reason. 

They have no place in my mind of logic and knowledge, 

But they insist on carving out a path, a seat in the court of my mind. In an effort to put this simply, it is annoying. 

Everything being dictated by the feelings of people. 

Everything should be ruled by logic, because frivolous arguments of “it’s against my religion,” or “I just don’t like it.” Will be rendered a moot point. 

Things would still be grey, still room for debate. But a skillful debate, one where instead of raised voices it would be raised arguments. 

Facts prevailing over untested feelings and ideas. 

Truth triumphing over the chorus of untamed half truths and lies. 

Imagine it: How many problems would be solved if feeling were not allowed in government?

Civil rights for instance?

It started with the perfectly logical idea of equality for all?

That we, as members of the same species, members of this society, deserve to be treated as equal? 

What was the argument against it?

No, it hurts my feelings.

This scenario can be applied to almost anything.   
Emotions getting in the way of a perfectly logical idea or situation. Emotions getting in teh way of a logical world.

I’m not saying the dismantle of all emotions entirely. 

I’m saying they have no place in government. 

No place in decision making that holds the fate and lives of millions, or even thousands. That is too big of a risk. 

But for me and my life. I would be a void for emotions.

They’re stupid, it makes life hard. So unnecessarily hard. 

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve cried or cut because of emotions. How many times they got in my perfect world of no emotions. 

It destroys me, completely utterly and totally. 

I wish my mind to lose all emotions. I would be free. 

Free from my darling depression, from my fear. Free from everything that minds me and blinds me. 

Emotions just get in my way. 

But emotions aren’t all bad. 

After all they make us human. The drive of emotions make us, well us. 

If you interview survivors of tragedy, of disaster, they often tell you hopes of love, emotions of resilience, of fear. Those things kept them alive. When my life was destroyed the one thing keeping me alive, was the spite to live. The spite to prove to the world that they were wrong. That I am still here despite the world screaming for my death. 

Not to mention the hope and longing for a better life. For my future self to live the life I dreamt of. 

I think emotions are for other people. Ones stronger than I could ever hope to be.


	8. God Are You Here?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I'm back from Italy. It was an amazing trip and I had the time of my life! Everything was so beautiful and just yes. I went to Mass lead by the Pope himself. I love it so much. I JUST FOUND OUT HOW TO FORMAT THINGS ON THIS WEBSITE AND I FEEL SO PROUD OF MYSELF!
> 
> This chapter is about God, I hope you enjoy! Kudos, comment, subscribe! Those make my life so much better. Have a good day!

There has been one question that has plagued humanity since our beginning, and that question is 'Is there a God?' Is there a higher power that controls out lives? Does our creator look down at us in wonderment of all we've done? Or in disgust to see how far we have fallen?

 

The idea of not having a religious figure that is real has kept me up so many nights.  The thoughts dancing in tandem with each other in the ballroom of my mind.  Dancing and dancing until it screams a beat no one can ignore.  

 

The things that make us human are the facts that we have gods, and we question the idea of it.

 

I remember when I was younger my family took me to church.  I would play rock paper scissors with my sibling while the Priest talked about God.  After that my sibling and I would go to Bible School.  The likes of which I protested adamantly, asking 'Why?  I have to go to school from Monday through Friday.  Saturday and Sunday were my only free days.  Why do I have to give that up?  Surely God would understand?'

  
Don't get me wrong.  I loved God.  I loved the idea that there was a higher power.  One watching over me, and would love me no matter what.

 

Notice I said 'loved.'  I supposed the truth is, I can't be so completely in love with God.

 

Not when people tell me he will look at me with hatred and strike me down into hell. 

 

I suppose this is me saying in preparation for the God I adored hating me, I have made the resolve to not have affection for him.  

 

Just merrily.... indifference.

 

If a stranger walked up to you and condemned you, would you care?

 

I wouldn't.

 

That is my train of thought, defend before you get hurt.  Strike first and apologize last.  Do not even for a second let someone hurt you first.

 

But what if God loves me?  What will I do then?

 

I will beg for forgiveness.  And I will pray they grant it.

 

What if it is not the God I expect to be?  I expect him to be wise.  To be old, and powerful.  To be answer that I've searched for all my life. 

 

What if God brings more questions than answers?  Me meeting him only brings me more pain?  The questions that rip through me finally tearing me apart? 

 

What will happens then?

 

What happens if God is not what I needed?

 

What will happen to me?

 

What will I do?

 

The brave part of me says I will become a fallen angel.  That I will try to tell the truth of the God who _dared_ and break the promise I was told would be kept.

 

But I know myself, there is a reason why I am an _almost_ outlier.  I have to potential to be something great or horrible.  I just never act on it. 

 

If God wasn't what I need then I will fall over and experience my second death.

 

That is what I imagine would happen.

 

God created me (or as I believe).  He made me like this.  A conglomerate of intelligence, of possibility, of poetry, of light, of darkness.  It is simply a matter if he thought me brave enough.

 

Sometimes I wonder. 

 

Did God take years to make me? Did he carefully craft me so I would make history?  Did he throw me together with all the parts he didn't use?  Was he careless or careful?  Did he make me with a specific  purpose in mind?  Or was I just another person he created because of an accident?

 

I was a surprise for my mother and father.  They did not want me, nor did they plan for me.  

 

I think it takes nine months for God to chose and select the seeds to put in our garden soul.  But with me, he poured all the seeds that don't make sense into me.

 

I am Brave, but I am Meek.  I am Creative, but I am Afraid.

 

I think he put too much fear in me.  I then tried to stomp it out.  But no matter what I do, they grow back. 

 

And we all know.  Between Fear and Bravery, fear almost always wins.

 

Or it just could be me.  God having put effort into me.  And me just failed to realize that potential.  The seeds he put in me carefully chosen. 

 

But my greatest fear.  My greatest fear about God, is that he will not look at me with hatred or disgust, or even love and kindness.  

 

But with indifference. 

 

But not a care for me.  That would break me, destroy everything I've ever been.  Him looking at me and saying ' _Oh, Alexander?  I don't remember making you.  Let us take a look, oh!  Well, you haven't done anything too good or bad.  Heaven or hell, your choice.  I have more important people and things to attend to.  Goodbye_.'  That would kill me. 

 

The God who might hate or love me simply not caring.  They were promised to feel  _something_ for me.  If they didn't, I don't know what I'd do. 

 

That's a lie.  I would know what i would do.

 

I'd stand there, my mouth agape in a silent scream.  Planning out my revenge.  But never brave enough to put my perfect plan into motion.

 

In my garden soul is the flower of rebellion is being destroyed by the weeds of fear. 

  
I feel God, sometimes.  In trees, in books, in the empty spaces of my bones, the scratch of my pen.  In the taste of the empty spaces between the shuffle of my songs.  But I have never once felt him in a church.  I find it strange, the one place you have a guarantee of God.  Is the most godless. 

 

I don't find strange actually, I find it harrowing. 

 

God not being in the one place in which he is promised to be.  How terrifying is that?  A godless worship. 

 

What if God has come to hate his creations?  Not just me, but everyone?  What if he looks at his children in hatred?

  
Then what would stop him from claiming all out lives?  And bring about the end of the world?

 

Perhaps it is because of his memory of love for us.  I remember loving God at one point.  And it is that has kept me from saying he does not exist, and turning away from him completely. 

 

I think that is his train of thought if he does hate us. 

 

Memories are a powerful thing, my dear reader.  Never underestimate them. 

 

I think in the end, when I stand before him and asks if he hates us.  Only then I will understand.

 

But I will not be alone.  All those who've preached his hate will fall with me.  They will know the  _pain_ of the one person promised to love you, hating you. 

 

It is a shattering pain, leaving you as dust particles whipping around.  Trying to find that one bit heavier than the rest to gravitate to.

 

But at the same time, I would not wish that pain on to anyone.  Even those who hate me.  That desire to do no harm out weighs the begging not to be alone.

 

I would rather suffer alone, than with thousands of millions of people who God turned his back to.

 

I'm sure a braver person would say differently.

 

I've gone into detail about what my heaven would look like.

 

But what would God look like?

 

Will he look like what the Church says?  You know the image, the crown of thorns, head bent down in a picture of acceptance?  Bones sticking through paper skin?

 

 People have said because of his location he would in fact, be a person of color.  A lot of people want him to be.

 

God might not be a boy though.

 

God could be a women, a child, an animal, a tree.  Anything in their creation.

 

My theory of God is like my theory on hell.   It changes from person.  Fitting what they need to see. 

 

My God will look like me.  Dark hair, and eyes, and hands created for writing.  But the scars on my wrist will instead manifest on his forehead, where he was crowned with thorns.

 

I think My God could look like my mother, my father, or my grandmother.

 

Or a tree. 

 

Either way God chooses to show himself to me, I will be grateful. 

 

Like everything I've talked about what will happen if there wasn't a God?

 

If humans somehow managed to beat the odds and come into existence?

 

How incredibly  _lucky_ are we?

 

Billions upon Billions of events, of people, of things had to come together in oder for the earth to exist.  Not to mention the facts Billions more lead for humans.  

 

Just to think, we've beaten impossible odds.  We are in fact impossible. 

 

Impossible possibilities that carved their own way into reality. 

 

Compare:  Odds of us v. Odds Against

 

1:∞ 

 

We beat infinity.  We are the ones who destroyed the notion of impossibility. 

 

All without a God.  All without someone to guide us.  All without a philanthropist who laid out a path with a silent glare in their eyes.

 

Think of that.

 

We should be considered fiction based on how improbable we are.

 

I suppose in that sense that makes me an outlier.  But can one truly be considered an outlier, when you cannot be an outlier in anything else?

 

I don't know.

 

I've been to the Vatican, to the Sistine Chapel, Palm Sunday lead by the Pope himself.  And if God does not exist than how can we dedicate such splendor to their names?

 

To a false God?

 

People have claimed that he brought them to a higher being.

 

If they're wrong.  What would they do?  The higher power they put their entire lives just gone.

 

What will happen then? What would happen if the power that saved their lives gone?

 

What will happen then?

 

Without God there to hold them up what will happen?

 

What will happen?

 

The God, Gods, or whatever higher power you believe in.  Just nothing.

 

Understand this, please.

 

All wars fought because of religions all that death, that loose, everything ever made in their name, gone.  Worthless, so much dedicated to nothing.

 

I've made the jump that if there is no God, nothing the promised will be there either.  

 

No heaven.

 

No hell.

 

No life after death.

 

Or resurrection. 

 

Just nothing. 

 

Nothing. 

 

Like sleep, were we do not remember our dreams. 

 

Some people crave this.  I admit I was one of these people. 

 

But I craved it so much I became to fear it.

 

I Alexander Dubenich fear the death that is described as sleep.

 

Because a death like sleep means no God.  And I would rather have a God who hates me and casts me into Hell than no God at all. 

 

But what do you want?  God or No God?'

 

I prefer a God, even as one as cruel and unforgivable as the Greek Pantheon than no God at all. 

 

I'm not sure how I feel about this prospect.

 

I'm not sure if it binds me or frees me.

 

There is not a fine line between fear and anticipation.

  
Is there?

  
How am I supposed to know?

 

I'm an almost outlier.

 

Nothing of importance.

 

I wish there was a God to tell me I was wrong.

 

I know why people say it was just chance that brought them into being.  Not God.

 

Or at least, i think I know why.

 

I think it is because they choose it.  They refuse to accept any higher power than their own.  Saying there is no god controlling their lives because they are the only ones in power. 

 

How can someone who's not real have control over them?

 

That was my line of thought.  Trying to justify my misery. 

  
But whether it be real or nor real.

 

I will only know with death. 

 

 


	9. Words as a weapon?  Or as peace?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WORDS. WORDS AND MORE F*CKING WORDS...... I like words a lot so I figured to make a whole chapter dedicated to it. I literally woke up with my pen in my hand and writing this at like 2 am... so enjoy!

It has been drilled into my head that words do not hurt.  You know the rhyme?  'Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.' 

 

To me that cannot be more wrong, or right.

 

Words are not inherently good, or bad.  Just....... powerful.

 

It is how you use that power is how you create or destroy.

 

I use words as peace.   My whisper of a voice brokering a steady truce.  My words, soft, silent, still.

 

Others can use words as weapons.  Their voices armed with barbed-wire. Their throats dripping and dropping in venom.

 

If wielded correctly words can be the most dangerous thing in this world.

 

"I hate you."

 

"Prepare for war."

 

"I do not care who I have to kill."

 

"Get out."

 

"Guilty."

 

"I don't love you anymore."

 

"They're dead."

 

"I'm leaving you."

 

"I can't marry you."

 

"I don't know you anymore."

 

"You're a freak of nature, you monster."

 

Words as weapons, my dear, they leave the darkest, the most painful, the deepest wounds. 

 

They leave the ones that keep us up late at night.

  
They are the ones that destroy everything we've always felt.

 

I've never been brave enough to use my own words as weapons.

 

No, wait.  That is a lie.

 

In my mind, my words maim.  They burn, cut, scar, break, implode, screech with a fury unlike any other ever seen or spoken.

 

I could undo, unmake many people in this world.

 

If I've been brave enough (or selfish enough) to open my mouth.

  
Words are the very thing that separates us from the animals.  Words give us the power to question.

 

After all; words are the things that allow me to tell you of my thoughts.

 

Words create a web.  A web of love, of pain, of hope, of despair, of fear, of strength, of memories that connect us all in the tapestry of our lives. 

 

There is a reason why the first written words were the catalyst to spark the flame in humans. 

 

But words are strange.

  
They are the sound our vocal cords make, random noises that we assign abstract meanings to.

 

They are darkened lines painted and beaten on to pieces of dried trees.

 

Creating images in your head that cannot be ignored. 

 

READ THIS IN A SHOUT.

 

read me in a whisper.

 

Now, I am sobbing.

 

Think of me in pain.

 

Think of laughter, and read me like that.

 

Would that be possible without words?

 

Words allow us to shape the abstract ideas that grow in our garden soul.  They give us the power to drive our lives.

 

Words are calls to war.

 

Please for peace.

 

Gasping sobs for mercy.

 

Hitching screams for hope.

 

Words are so much more than what anyone expect them.

  
Words were invented to make trading easier. 

 

Now _look_ , look at what words have become. 

 

Poems that tell stories of tragic love, wars fought in the home of peace. 

  
Stories that have shaped humanity for thousands of years, and will continue to shape us for millennia.

 

Words, they allow the way for almost outliers to put out their ideas before their time runs out.

 

Words.

 

W O R D S

O  O

R      R

D         D

S              S

 

They immortalize us in the scratch of a pen, the clack of a keyboard.

 

Words are music in the caverns of our minds. 

 

I've seen many things say 'Do not write sentences, write  _music_.'

 

Which is to wonder.  What is writing music?

 

Here are four words.  And four more words.  All these sentences, four.  Four words, four words.  I'm sick of four.  My writing is wrong.  It doesn't sound right.  I hate just four.  I need more words.  I sound like nothing.  I hate sounding dead.

 

That is  _not_ music.  That is cardboard.

 

Now will be my attempt to write music. 

 

This is not four words.  I am penning a sentence that is more than four words. See how I am making the words dance and spark? Can you see how they dance and frolic across the page? The crash in a crescendo. Boom with a beat. Scream and rip through the silence of a mind. Sing along to the thump thump of your heart. They have a rhythm a song, they sound alive as each stroke of my pen carves ink into the page. I am writing with sound. With thought. Breathing live into more words than just FOUR. I am writing more than music. I am writing a tree, old and strong. A flower, beautiful and bold. The sea, the ocean a riptide and moving. I am writing the wind, free and dangerous. It swells with the life I have writing. Writing. I create more than music when I write.

For with words, I write _life_.

 


	10. Face or Fear the Reaper?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grime Reaper is not a religious figure. Or even Death themselves. It simply just is. But what do they remember? What are they? Who do they work for?
> 
> Sorry for the late update! I had an exam and didn't finish the chapter. (Don't hate me) But I hope you guys enjoy this!

The Grim Reaper is not associated with any religion, any set of people, or anything other than human.s

 

The Grim Reaper is perhaps the most well known figure in the world not associated with religion. 

 

People demonize the Reaper so much, so painfully much.

 

But why?  They are not death?  They are just the one to walk us to the end. 

 

Imagine if you had to make the journey alone, by yourself?  Without someone to ease the thoughts that you are dead?

 

Humans are inherently social creatures.  Imagine if we had to walk the most important trek by ourselves?

 

I think we would go insane.

 

Without the sound of our hearts pounding, without the familiar so soft beat of our breath.  The Reaper would be the one to hold us. The one to whisper into our ear, and remind us of the better things on ahead.

 

If the Reaper wasn't there, how many of us would fall on our journey to after and just stay there?

 

Afraid?

 

Desparate?

 

Nothing more than shades?

 

I would be afraid to continue on if that was the case.

 

But what does the Reaper remember?  Who has seen them?  How lives do they remember?

 

When I meet I'll ask, not if there is a heaven.  But what stories they remember?

 

I imagine it would go like this.

 

_"Welcome to the after."  The Reaper will say, their face cloaked in darkness._

 

_"Hello Reaper, how are you?"  I will ask, taking their hand in mine._

 

_The Reaper will (maybe) be stunned, but answer my question._

 

_I'll continue to ask questions about themselves, before asking the one that burns.  "Reaper, will you tell me what you remember?"_

 

_"What?"_

 

_"The people you've taken to after, surely they've told you who they are?  Who they left?  Will you tell me about them?"_

 

_Then the Reaper will answer me.  Telling me stories of lives long passed.  Tales of love, of longing, of hope, despair, and everything between._

 

Stories connect us all, no matter who we are.  Stories shape us.

 

What better way to connect us all with a story about the one thing we can never outlast?  
  


Is there a better way?  
  


If words connect us in a web, death cements us in something stronger than concrete.

 

Death touches us all, it leaves no person alive.  It is unassuming, all seeing, and it does not care who you were.  Who you were going to be.  Who loves you, who you are leaving.

 

IT

  
  
DOES

  
NOT

  
CARE

 

Perhaps to make up for the apathy Death shows.  The Reaper is there to make up for it.

 

Death's first gift... or maybe its their last?  Maybe Death provides the luxury of a Reaper because it knows what lies beyond it is so painful.

 

When I meet the Reaper other than what they remember, I will ask why they were created.

 

The first of maybe surprises?  Or the last gift of the world so cold?

 

To fear, or not to fear?  
  


Its liking and seeking out death.

 

What is truth?

 

Is the Reaper a first gift or the last?

 

It death even real?  
  


Is the Reaper death?

 

Or just a servant?

 

But I will only know in death.

 

Then I will ask the questions that have plagued and burned the scape of my mind.

 


	11. Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talkin' about pain today.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry I can't stick to an update schedule. I came out at trans to my mom and it didn't go that well. I mean I'm still at home, and not being abused. Just she doesn't get it, or me. And just life. Enjoy nerds. Kinda a short chapter but eh.

At the beginning of this inquiry, I said pain is relative.  I said what could destroy me could only harm you, could heal someone else kill another. 

 

Which isn't true.

 

All pain is felt, but it is how you react to it is how it defines you.

 

I have had loves ripped away from me.  People who have shaped my life gone.   i've had pain so intense I wondered just  _how_ I am still alive. 

 

My hands are broken from melding myself back together from the times I've been shattered. 

 

Pain is pain.  There is no other way to define it. 

 

It is one of the most universal feelings in the world. 

 

If words connect us in a web, Death and The Reaper cement us in a bond stronger than concrete.  Pain binds us together, pressed against each other in the pages of a book.

 

Life is not sunshine and rainbows like people want us to believe.  Nor is it just pain.

 

Rather I prefer to think of it life is like.... salted caramel. 

 

Salt brining out the sweetness of the treat?  Intensifying it?

 

That is what pain does.  It makes the pleasure of life more intense because we know how painful the rest can be. 

 

I've tasted happiness made all the sweeter with the bitter notes pain leaves behind. 

 

Pain water our garden souls as well.  It kills or feeds certain plants. 

 

For me, pain killed the 'self confidence' plant and made the 'anger' or 'fear' plant all the more stronger. 

 

Pain caused me to grow thousand foot thorns.  Pain made me stop, my voice from hiding everyone and everything.

 

While others, pain made them stronger,  _angry_.

 

Pain lit a fire in them that left no one unscathed.  No punches were pulled, no person walking without a target pained in blood on their back.  Their pain was a volatile bomb anyone can detonate it and it would just reset....... waiting for the next victim. 

 

Others, pain makes them strange.  Addicted in a sense. 

 

Perhaps it is like the idea of pleasurable hell. 

 

I don't understand.  And I will not try to.

 

Some people like pain.

 

I am not one of those people. 

 

Pain and pleasure for me are pleasantly (always) separated. 

 

I cannot fathom why people would like it.... but people do.  And I will not make an attempt to understand because I fear if I do, it will be too much for my simple mind. 

 

Pain does not ignore who you are, what you will be, much like Death and The Reaper. 

 

We are bound together in the pages of a book by pain. 

 

I have been shaken, ruined, and destroyed by pain.  And so have other people....

 

It binds us together. 

 

Pain.

 

How we wish you didn't shape our lives.....

  
But you do.

 

Pain, you exist, and we are your bitch.

 

 

 


	12. The Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So The Questions of an Almost Outlier is going to come to a close soon. I don't know when, but I know it will. But look out for my other works cause like writing is my soul and I want people to actually read it. I want to thank you all for reading! 
> 
> Wow, didn't even talk about the chapter. It is about the universe and how we believe we don't really matter but we really do in my mind. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos, comment, make my life better.

What is a drop of water to the ocean?

 

What is a leaf to a forest?

 

A gust of wind to a hurricane?

 

A single letter to a book?

 

Who am I to the universe?

 

What is a speck of dust to an abandoned city?

 

The answer is confusing to say the least. 

 

Everything and nothing. 

 

Nothing because we are part of the billions. 

 

Billions of drops of water. 

Billions of leaves. 

Billions of wind gusts. 

Billions of pieces of dust. 

 

Billions of Humans.

 

Everything because where would billion be without me?

 

It is created of things, take one away and it cannot, will never be the same. 

 

We might be insignificant next to the whole.  But we create the whole.

 

And that cannot be denied. 

 

Same goes for the universe.

 

We create it.  Without us, it can never be whole again. 

 

The insignificant, significant in their one piece out of infinity. 

 

We are so small. 

 

But out loss would be felt. 

 

The infinity, the vastness of the world, the universe.  Never again the same.

 

Not a big shift the cosmos mind you but ... subtle. 

 

Maybe an atom coming together sooner.  Gravity working its strange magic all the sooner. 

 

A star collapsing a millisecond too soon. 

 

We all are significant.  We just seem to loose that sight in the vastness of what we create.

 

Where would be infinity without me?

 

Where would the world be without me?

 

What would we be if we discounted everyone who discounted themselves?

 

The universe

 

is

 

us.

 

It is everything and we are to.

 

Nothing has a spot in infinity as well.

 

Everything we have ever done has led to this moment, every breath we take, every choice we make has led to this moment in the universe.

 

How can we discount that?

 

I feel like I must discuss the possibility of a multiverse. 

 

For example:  Choices.

 

I have a choice between an apple or an orange. 

 

I select apple in one universe.  I select orange in another.  Creating two separate universes in that moment. 

 

But take into the account all the other infinite choices. 

 

An uncountable infinity of universes that are created by significant insignificant choices, atoms, stars, people, dust, and matter. 

 

The odds of you existing.  Billions of others.  You beat out because you were faster.

 

There are universes where you weren't faster, where you don't exist.  Where I don't exist. 

 

One simple inconsequential thing known as speed, changing everything we have ever known. 

 

What strange magic we are. 

 

The universe is indifferent.  It does not care if we live or die.  It just simply exists. 

 

It is a body, and we are the cells.  Do you mourn every cell you loose?

 

It is a beast and we are its tools. 

 

We are tangled by words, bound by death, cemented by pain, and kept alive and keep alive by the universe. 

 

The universe is a strange, complicated, beautifully wrenched, senseless being. 

 

And we are the organs, the atoms, the building blocks that create this beast. 


	13. Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I live! Sorry, these have been a rough couple of months(?) and I haven't been able to write this specifically. But I went back home to California for my grandmother's laying to rest, and I found myself drawn to writing this. Also, these next few chapters will be the last. So goodbye to Questions of an Almost Outlier.

Many a great mind have pondered the meaning of life. 

 

I have.

 

Questions like, why are we here?  Why do we go like this?  For what reason do we exist?

 

For me, the answer came from a strange and dark place.

 

The darkest part of my life somehow gave birth to the meaning of it. 

 

The meaning of my life is to question.

 

I just suppose it is too late, now that my life is coming to a close.

 

You see my friend, I was never meant for a long life.  And I feel it drawing to a close.

 

But not before I ask the question mine.

 

Not before.

You see, the meaning of life is different for each person.

 

For my mother, it is to love God and my family.  My father, to love my mother.  

 

My sibling, to travel the world.

 

For me: to question.

 

What is life without questioning?  What is life without what we know?  For all those came from people questioning.

 

That is what if is to me, questioning.

 

Forever it shall be.

 

The period that gave birth to my meaning is when I stopped.

 

I stopped questioning, I stopped doing the one thing I was put on this earth to do.

 

It was painful, dark, purely wretched and everything dark.  Nightmare worthy.

 

I surprised myself with an ability to stay alive.

 

Imagine.... a lung taken out.

 

You try and try to breathe.  But you cannot get enough air.

  
Self-inflicted torture is another way to describe what I did.

 

My whole existence was grey. My life, broken, bloodied, my ink stained hands my papered skin, my ink red blood... nothing.

 

I have never felt more obsolete in my entire life.

  
Who am I to life?

 

Life is a force, it is beauty.  Pain, hope, destruction, creation, love, and hate.

 

Life is everything we cannot control and everything we cannot stop. 

 

Life is magic, fleeting yet eternal. 

 

Life is  _us_.

 

I wrote once, 'for with words I write create life,''.

 

Which one is to wonder... what is  **life _._**

 

Is life me?

 

You?  
  


Tha plant?

 

Those animals?

 

Life is a consuming force.  It has all of us in its wretchedly divine grasp, only to let us go.

 

We cling to it, trying to convince us to consume us.  Addicts we are, addicts to life.

 

But in the end,  _it lets us go_.

 

Or we let it go.

 

Do we overdose on it?  Or do we become high of our own immortality and life decides to teach us a lesson by taking itself away?

 

How cruel would that be?

 

Well, I guess that's why they say life isn't fair.

 

That's one of my favorite things.  How we know life will end.  How we know nothing will turn out fair.  Life, in the end, sees us as nothing more than ourselves.

 

But we still fight against those veritable truths.  We seek to make life fair.  To the end of it so we can last even beyond the stars.

 

Life is strange.  Energy cannot be created or destroyed, yes?  So where do we get the energy to spark and live?  Do we take it from our parents?

 

Do we steal the spark from some fair off star?

 

Questions... Questions... Questions. 

 

Life, you consume us.  You own us. And we are addicted to you.

 

What happens when we overdose?

 

Do many questions.....

 

So little life left to live.

 

 


	14. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kudos, comment, I guess there is no point in subscribing anymore? But thanks anyway.

Time is purely utterly, and completely human. And beautifully so.

 

Hours, time, seconds, minutes, days, weeks, night, months, years.  We are the only ones who measure out our lives. 

 

Some say it does not exist.  Others it is truth, but it this will be my only fact.  Time is in the between.

 

In between.

 

It is both real and not real.

 

Real because it cannot be denied.  It was one of the first beings.  The Titan Kronos?  Time's progression is all around us.  The trees from green to fire to death to rebirth.  The sea, the ocean from high to low to high again and again?  Animals, the know, days from night.  They feel muscles decay.  Many reports have been filed of whales trying to die by beaching themselves for they know their life is coming to an end.

 

How can one deny that?

 

People say time, like Death, is our master.  We wish and want more of it, but we fall.  We fall to it, or by it.

 

Time, it is cruel.  Like death it is undeniable.  Nothing can bargain for more like no one can run from Death.

 

Every year without fail we have celebrated my birth. Each marking one more revolution around the sun.  Each one showing the way I have aged.

 

But a year is the revolution around the sun.  Each of the years I've spent alive on a rock that I have no power over.  Running screaming around a sphere of burning light.

 

Strange once you put it into perspective.

 

I have asked for someone to create a minute for me.  I've asked them to define it passed 60 seconds.

 

I haven't gotten a real answer.  No set definition, no answer that can sedate the burning curiosity that ignites itself in my bones.

 

But I can define a day.

 

A day is the light.  A day is the sun shinning on this side of the earth.  A night is night, the darkness encompassing the earth. It is a strange thing, time.

 

It is in between, two things that should be impossible to exist between.  Real and made up.

 

We cannot say it does not exist.  We cannot say it does not drown us in its sand.  But we canot define it in such a way it can be proven.

 

Mothns, days, years, minutes, seconds, hours, and weeks.

 

TIme should be an impossible thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	15. Magic

Can you imagine the magic? Can you? The thing we desperately wished for to be real. For dragons to become friends, for stars to fall and love us?  Can you?

 

When I was little I day dreamed of faerie, of elves, of gnomes, trolls, everything I've seen in the books I've read when I was young.

 

How I wished they would wake up and speak to me.

 

Then, when that did not happen I chose to make my own magic.  I picked a pen, a black one with golden clasps.  I wrote the riptides that welled, I tried to write of a young witch, saving the world from evil.  Looking back, what I wrote was painful compared to what I am able to write now.

 

Now with my ink covered fingers and blooded stained well I wonder if I ever will.

 

Magic, in my simple mind exists.

 

How else do you explain the unexplainable?

 

How do you describe the brilliant minds that revolutionized so much?  They worked magic with paint, ink, numbers, letters, philosophy, and life.  How does one just say they just excelled when you can akin them to wizards that we wished walked the earth?

 

I believe everyone has magic.

 

Everyone has magic in their blood.  But... subtle.

 

One might be able to create paints to make you cry.  Others brew the best tasting beers you have ever had passed your lips.

 

Another might be able to win every single game of rock paper scissors.  One might be able to all kinds of made-up imaginations. 

 

Me?  

 

I believe I was granted the magic to write.

 

But that is not true.  I've fought for this.  I've spent hours chasing this impossible dream.  I've spent years learning perfect words.  Thousands of words woven together with pain and love.

 

No, my friend.  Mine is probably my ability to survive. 

 

I've been through countless tragedies.  Thousand events that have shaken me to my very foundations and killed everything I wished to be.

 

**And I am still here _._**

 

Everyday I can chose to life or die.  Well,  five times I've tried to end my life.

 

Doctors have said that they are impressed with how I've managed to survive.

 

What strange magic am I?

 

My brother, he could find 4-leaved clovers almost anywhere.  My mother can change the radio station back at the perfect time for an ad to end and song to play.  My grandmother could knit anything just by looking at it once.

 

Never have we might been able to create storms of nothing.  But we might have been able to tell when they come.

 

We all have magic.  Just not in the way we wish.

 

 


	16. Love

Wars have been fought.  Death brought.  It is said to be a force of nature.  Something that sets us apart from everything.  We search for it, thinking it can give us meaning in our lives. 

 

Everyone says it saved them:  books, and stories and everything says it is all you need.  That magic is a cure all.

 

I can't believe that is true.  How can a chemical reaction be the thing that helps you through an over romanticized illness?  


 

How?

 

It didn't fix me.

 

I've tasted love.  And I've had it ripped from me.

 

That is a lie.

 

I could have fallen in love.  Do you know that possibility?  Falling in love?  Knowing that, you could have loved them?  If you just had more  **time _._**

 

The 'what if', the possibility of it, that is what hurts the most.

 

Doubly so if you know their dead now.

 

And I know, I believe, they will always be my 'what if.'

 

What if we had more time?  What if I could have done more?  What if, what if, what if?

 

My 'what if'.  I'll wonder about you forever.

 

But moving on.  Why do we focus on romantic love?  When other types are just as real.

 

My friend saved me with their love.  Well, not entirely true.  Their love gave me the strength to save myself.

 

I have no doubt in my simple mind that my family loves me. There is nothing in my life that has made me doubt that the love they have for me is as endless as the universe.  And then some, because it truly cannot end.

 

And I know their love for God is endless.

 

I know so many things.  But I do not known what is so wondrous about love.

 

We have fought wars for it.  Killed so many.  And I still do not understand it.  I don't think I ever will.  Perhaps if I had a chance to love with my 'what if,' and moved on from that I would understand.

 

I have felt love for my brother, my parents, my numerous as the star cousins.  My best friend.  I have felt  the potential of my long dead 'what if' love.

 

But I still cannot grasp why people have fought wars. 

 

I've read books.  Many books about people fighting to win another.  Only to turn to the darker side if they were not chosen in the competition as victor of someone's heart.  I must wonder, why?  If you claim to love them, if you claim you want the to be happy.  Then why must further help the thing causing their love pain?  Surely they would stop hurting them if they loved them so much?  I would rather have my love happy with another than miserably with me?

 

Perhaps, I was just too weak to see why.

 

Love is a force I do not understand.  Perhaps it is something I will never get.

 

Like I said before, love didn't fix me.  If anything, love doesn't fix anything.

  
It ties your entire mental state to someone.  I cannot imagine anything that ties your total and complete happiness to one person is a good idea.  Love shouldn't be the thing to save you.  Love should be an added bonus to your life.  Not the thing that creates it, makes it worth all the while.  And I'm talking strict romantic love.

 

It is the mixture of platonic, familial, and romantic love.  Not just one or another.

 

Yes, I acknowledge that love is important.  But it should not be everything to a life.  Like I've said before, it is a conglomerate of good, of bad, of fear, of courage.  To boil it down to one emotion, one emotion, one feeling, one experience, is to spit in Life's eye.  And say you do not appreciate the gift given to you.

 

Life and love go hand in hand most days.  Most nights they let go of their embrace.  At night.

 

Life touches everyone.  It is the one thing that was guaranteed to us.

 

Love, on the other hand, that was speculation.

 

It is not guaranteed.  Its just... there.  Love is just there, it could or could not touch our lives.

 

Love is a pretend guarantee.  Nothing more or nothing less.  It is a lie to pretend it is one of the emotions guaranteed in our life.


	17. Why?

I've said before, I'm nearing the end of my life.  And I wish to ask all the questions that I have not asked.  To relieve my soul of plants, the weight of that has consumed me.

 

I have realized too late that I have thoughts that other people will never have . I have realized that I had the potential to be great, but never acted on it.  

 

~~I have realized too late.~~

How ironic?

 

I have said in the beginning that I am not a philosopher.  But now I realize that I am a would be philosopher and a would be pathetic excuse for a poet.

 

It is surreal.

 

The knowing of what I could have been.  If I only have had the courage to jump, to plunge myself feet no **head** first into wonder.  Without the fear of into the forest of philosophy, to bathe in the lava of asking. 

 

I wish I had known sooner

 

I wish, I wonder, I plead and I whisper.  I wish I could dream another ending.

 

In this ending, I would be with my what if love, or with another.  I imagine my life with him would be sharp and wondrous.

 

My fictional master piece.

 

This is why my dearest reader.  This is why.

 

I question now because I never did before.

 

I wish I knew then what I know now.

 

How would I be different. 

 

Would my garden soul look the same?

 

Questions, questions, wonderings. 

  
The type for the cowards like me.


	18. Perhaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end.
> 
>  
> 
> It was amazing to write this, and I thank everyone who has taken the time to read this. I hope you all enjoyed what you read, and check out some of my other works!

I can feel my life shorten.  Now I see the Reaper at the foot of my bed.  The taste of the end is heavy on my lips.

 

The Reaper looks like my what if love.

 

If this is my last moments, the last time I will have lips heavy with the taste of dust.  Ink stained fingertips.  The last time I will feel paper on my nib.  I want to tell you:

 

Don't be afraid, ask, stand, want, take, plead and bargain. Be fearless in the face of adversity, have no what if loves.  Do not be a coward.

 

Love God, hate God, be apathetic to them.  

 

Dance in the rain.  Watch and coax a flower to bloom.  Take no cruel words without defense.  Talk to your family.  Plant a tree.

 

Question everything.

 

Do not be like me and let everything slip through your fingertips.

 

Be the outlier I know you are, I know you can be.

 

Do not fear the Reaper. But rather greet him as a long forgotten writer.  Or lover.

 

And for the question I have to ask before the Reaper wearing the face of my what if love takes me:

 

Wh


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